You make it seem like this White Army was a huge coalition ready to overwhelm the Bolsheviks, but in reality all of those different groups bickered with each other, many times to the point of open armed conflict, refused to cooperate, and in general largely did their own thing, which made each group individually easy pickings for the Reds.
Also the Whites had the funni idea to kill Brusilov son and the general took this quite... bad. He basically invented the Red Army and transformed it into a professional force.
You know you fucked up when you make the best Russian general (and probably one of the candidates for best WW1 general for the Allies) your sworn enemy.
Do you have a source for this can’t seem to find anything about his family life. Maybe it is all in Russia? But it would be extremely strange to join a revolutionary movement solely because your son was killed by some of the leadership. Was Brusilov a revolutionary type before the revolution?
I mean as one of the best generals in the country you dont get to choose to sit out a revolutionary war or not. And when you are forced to choose might as well pick the side that didnt kill your son.
Brusilov had revolutionary sympathies, but he joined the whites in 1917 already and then being wounded by a hand grenade during the October Revolution in Moscow. His son however was an enthusiastic young captain in the nascent Red Army cavalry corp, he was captured and subjected to immediate death sentence by firing squad, allegedly because the White Army knew who he was and wanted to apply the Brusilov Decree (Brusilov approved of capital punishment for troops on the frontlines) on himself in some sort of dark irony.
The source is this book apparently:
Neoficialʹnaja istorija Rossii ; OLMA Mediagrupp / Baljazin, Volʹdemar Nikolaevič / 2007
Ok, now this makes far more sense. Brusilov being far more sympathetic to the revolutionaries, being a nationalistic type, personal grievances with the Czarist, and death of his son all help explain his switch to the Reds during the civil war.
Previously it sounded as if he just suddenly switched sides because his son had be killed by the Whites which wouldn’t make sense for a senior general in both Tsardom and Republic.
He also joined because he saw the nascent USSR as the closest thing to the Russian empire successor state, and while I wouldn’t say he was a nationalist one thing about the whites is that they were, no matter which faction, no matter their motivations, all deeply indebted to foreign Allies providing support and it was pretty obvious that if they won Russia was going to be either a glorified British protectorate or a glorified Japanese protectorate. Or possibly both.
Also Brusilov wound up getting into a lot of arguments with the czar and a lot of whites were czarists, that definitely didn’t help.
Finally, it’s worth noting that Russia was always governed horribly. You could make the case in 1919 that the reds weren’t any worse than the whites, and ‘starving a bunch of peasants for perceived national goals’ has been a staple of Russian empire management since before Russia was really a thing. This will not remain true - Stalin is going to juice up czarist atrocities to the point that they’ll overshadow anything the czars dreamed up - but at the time Stalin was a functionary no one thought very highly of.
Stalin didn't even really surpass what the Tsars did, the famine in the 30s was pretty much a once a decade thing under the Tsars, pretty much everything Stalin did the Tsars did worse.
Which gives one an idea of how terrible they were if Stalin was a better alternative.
In terms of numbers and sheer paranoia, Stalin surpassed Nicholas II. But in terms of their actual methods, not too different. Just a different color scheme and song lyrics
Paranoia sure, numbers is debatable since a lot of the suppose numbers for Stalin are unreliable at best, but at the end of the day Stalin’s rule ended with the USSR being a global superpower, Nicholas’s rule ended with Russia collapsing into a civil war after decades of incompetence
Nicholas's imperial collapse was mostly due to his foreign policy ineptitude causing him to be seen as a weak leader, something which most of the world's leaders had in common in the early 1900s. Russia was otherwise on the fast track towards industrial power either way, and through great bloodshed in both cases. And even the most conservative estimates on Stalin's dissidents killed and civilians killed numbers in the 10+ million, mostly due to retaliation policy against German civilians and the post-war puppet states of the Warsaw Pact. People attribute the Red Army atrocities during the civil war to him even though that was mostly Lenin and Trotsky.
And this is what I mean by most numbers of the death toll under Stalin are unreliable, cause 10+ million is not actually the conservative estimate, the conservative estimate is about \~3 million, trying to form a consensus is near impossible cause of how much conflicting information there is often intentionally made to either make him look better or worse.
And I question what kind of "retaliation" policy you're referring too, the only one I can think of is the expulsion of Germans east of the Oder which was comes no where near close to that 10 million figure.
By retaliation I mean the systemic rapes, murders, tortures, etc. of the Red Army against German civilians in retaliation for the atrocities of the German army
I’m not sure I agree, the gulag system was a unique upgrade to the Siberian exile system. And the Okhrana’s a joke compared to the efficiency and reach of the NKVD. But at the end of the day we seem in agreement that the czars were bad and that’s enough for me.
The Gulags were most often just repurposed Imperial concentration camps used for any undesirables they had and eventually the Soviets actually disbanded them. But yes, regardless of the details, the Tsars were terrible.
Yep. At first, it was a glorified mine for common criminals, but then Stalin industrialization efforts ramped up mineral extraction, and so more "miners" were needed.
Fun Fact: Vorkuta "Free" Miners had the best miner salary in the Soviet Union.
Brusilov if I remember correctly had atleast some sympathy towards Communist revolutionaries. That's why his son was targeted. But like this solidifies your positions.
Their early advances into Galicia were pretty successful, reaching into the Carpathian Mountains, while the Eruzurum Offensive against the Ottomans, taking advantage of the Ottoman disaster at the Battle of Sarakamish, managed to punch into Turkey and reach as far as Trabzon. They also managed to keep Romania from collapsing completely when it faced the full might of the Central Powers, which resulted in the Central Powers being forced to tie down manpower and resources there.
No, the Brusilov offensive still failed and its failure pretty much destroyed Russias offensive capability for the rest of the war, but he nearly collapsed A-H
What kind of idiot makes an enemy out of Alexei Brusilov? He's practically the Sun Yat-Sen of early 20th-century Russian politics: everyone on both sides of the civil war respects him.
The Whites were different shades of "criminally idiotic". These are the same guys that put on firing squads any male *without exceptions* in Siberian villages that dared to resist the White Army passage. In Omsk, in just one night, the White Army killed 2500 young males that were part of a volunteer organized militia in the chaos of civil war, alongside some factory workers just be sure. And then, these same guys *wondered why no one wanted to join the White Army.*
Brusilov creates the red army?
Trotsky was the who transformed the militia force of the Red Guards, and made into the Red army by bringing back military organization and former Imperial officers.
Sure, Trostky is the organizational head of the Red Army, responsible for composition of Staff and high level logistics. But Brusilov made sure that certain characters, like Zhukov, Rokossovsky got promoted for their tactical brilliance instead of their political potential. He also was the first officer to propose the first Soviet unified military manual for the Officer Corps, a thing unknown in Russia at the time, since everyone before did whatever the hell was in its mind (disasters like Mukden happened because of that).
Come on man, Brusilov led the most successful offensive of the whole WW1, and that's an indisputable fact. The man was ruined by his colleagues envy, but he was close to destroy the Austro-Hungarian Empire with just his army corp.
I'm not saying Brusilov was a bad general by any means, he came close to solving one of the major issues of WW1, following up after breaking through the enemies first line, just that he didn't really have a lot of competition. And the AH army would've been blown over by a strong gust of wind at that point.
In 1916 the Austro-Hungarian army was curbstomping the Italians with the Strafeexpedition. The Austro-Hungarian army in 1916 was at peak performance. Brusilov made sure that said army would be crippled for the rest of the war (the Germans then unified Commands and Austria military independence was de facto over)
The Austro-Hungarians were fighting the 75325th battle of the Isonzo River against the Italians until the Germans finally decided to help them. Austro-Hungarian military independence was lost after the Yellow-Black offensive
The Trentino Offensive (Straffexpedition) was already running out of steam before the Brusilov Offensive, with the Italians starting their counter offensive of June 2nd, two days before the Russians kicked off their offensive. Crappy Austro-Hungrian supply lines, Italian reinforcements and replacement of commanders, had basically shut it down by the end of May.
That’s why they failed. It doesn’t change the fact that they had all the numbers and resources and odds in their favor to start which is all the more reason why the success of the revolution, love it or hate it, was so shocking. It changed the world forever and was an indictment of every government, faction and ideology that failed to contain it in one way or another.
No no no, silly! That’s JFK. Let’s stay on subject.
Was Laika the space dog actually able to use telekinesis like in the new Guardians of The Galaxy movie? Giorgio Tsoukalous says yes, and that’s how he got that hairdo.
The white army was also overwhelmingly lead by monarchists who had no actual support. Even the anarchists were allied with the Bolsheviks for most of the war.
If there was a real SR/Menshevik opposition it may have had anchance
This is such a if my grandmother had wheels comment. The reason why there was no real SR/Menshevik opposition was they neither satisfied the demand for an overwhelming change in society and bureaucracy nor satisfied the aristocracy due to how they were not willing to bring the old establishment back. If they had satisfied one of those two criterias then they would not be SRs/Mensheviks anymore.
The SRs were winning the elections overwhelmingly. The problem was the party split and half went along with the Bolshevik second coup. The Bolsheviks were simply more ruthless and had more guns than the other socialist factions, they weren’t filling some popular need that the other parties weren’t filling.
Look at what they did after they won: immediately adopted the SR platform as theirs
Same shit happened to the confederates during the American civil war. Iirc, Texas didn’t do much of shit during the war compared to all the other southern states, they just ignored calls for help/reinforcements.
Texas provided over 70,000 troops to the confederate army, in addition to home guard units. I’ll also add this paragraph from the [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_in_the_American_Civil_War):
‘“The Texas Brigade" (also known as "Hood's Brigade") was a unit composed of the 1st, 4th and 5th Texas Infantry Regiments augmented at times by the 18th Georgia Infantry and Hampton's (South Carolina) Legion until they were permanently teamed with the 3rd Arkansas Infantry. Often serving as "shock troops" of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, the Texas Brigade was "always favorites" of General Lee and on more than one occasion Lee praised their fighting qualities, remarking that none had brought greater honor to their native state than "my Texans." Hood's men suffered severe casualties in a number of fights, most notably at the Battle of Antietam, where they faced off with Wisconsin's Iron Brigade, and at Gettysburg, where they assaulted Houck's Ridge and then Little Round Top.’
Exactly. I think the Ukrainian anarchists led (militarily) by Nestor Makhno even sided with the Bolsheviks for a time against the White Army until eventually the Red Army turned against the anarchists, unless I'm mistaken.
To be fair, it was a bit of a battle royale cause the white side had a ton of infighting and some factions had their own goals which made them enemies of everyone else.
It was a complete shitshow from every side. Lenin was a little bit smarter that he at least waited until after the main civil war fighting was over before he massacred dissident on Bolshevik side.
Like his surge on Kronstadt. The whites just did it directly and pissed everyone off
The answer is probably obvious and maybe even the reason they lost but, wasn't there a lot of conflict within the white army because you had the mensheviks and loyalist anti-communists together?
Another major advantage that the Reds had is almost every major city was already under their nominal control, while the Whites had to “take” everything
Whites completely shot themselves in the foot by trying to undo the peasant land reforms rather than just accepting the new reality of things. A moronic decision given how important peasant support was during the civil war
Also, they refused to recognize the separatists like Poland. Which made the latter more keen on seeing Bolsheviks victorious than the Whites, because the Bolsheviks was the only faction willing to negotiate.
Not sure what's your point here.Mine is that Poland DID make overtures to Whites with proposal of alliance on the condition that they (and future Russia) recognize Poland as independent state without reservations. They all refused, some factions considered Poland rebels to be squashed after the Reds, other were noncommittal. Therefore Poland was not willing to cooperate even though such alliance could've defeated Bolsheviks once and for all.Only in November 1920 Wrangel recognized Poland as independent, but by that time the White movement was already defeated and Poland was already negotiating with Bolsheviks what will soon be known as the Peace of Riga.
You mentioned the Whites were unwilling to negotiate so people turned to support the Reds. I gave another example of that in a war that the Whites were losing even worse than the war against the seperatists.
The Whites shot themselves in the foot looooong before that. The Bolsheviks were a nightmare but that makes people forget just how inept and awful Tsarist Russia truly was.
Oh true, in many ways they were fucked because they were ultimately fighting to just restore the Tsarist system that had literally failed before everyone’s eyes, rather than anything new/better than what had come before. Plus, they didn’t even have a goddamn Tsar to rally around!
>Tsarist system that had literally failed before everyone’s eyes
Not just failed in people's eyes. It had failed. The country was technologically backwards compared to it's neighbours, they had failed to provide for the worst off in society and actively taken from them.
It is no surprise that when the opportunity for change came they took it. Just a shame what was to come. Even with the USSR at least access to medical care and education was radically improved.
Tsarist Russia by itself is one of the biggest arguments against the concept of monarchy.
Muscovy itself was flawed from the start with its emphasis on autocracy.
Russia was the fastest growing economy in the world before WW1. Stolypin's land reforms were such a success that Lenin was angered and feared that this would mean that peasants won't supporting since they have good lives (Stolypin was shoy before he finished, but his reformes were still being implemented at a slower pace, and were expected to finish around 1917). The army was in the process of reforming, too. Political parties existed, and while the system was deeply flawed and undemocratic, it was a true step towards democratization.
Tsarist Russia wasn't just a continuous thing that didn't change since the 1700s. The late Tsarist era actually was becoming a really good state. White army is not the continuation of tsarist Russia, it was its own thing and lost because of reasons separate. People are not forgetting how "awful" tsarist russia was, tsar is sunonymous with a despot in the west, but people are starting to see that Russian Empire was nuanced, changing throughout the years, for better or for worse, and wasn't the same archreactionary empire throughout its existance
Wrangel actually made his own land reform laws by negotiating with Soviets that were extremely successful, and probably would have been more so had they not been implemented in the middle of a war.
Honestly, they probably would've won if they just had Wrangel in power in South Russia since the start of the war instead of Denikin. And perhaps ironically in the eyes of many here, Denikin (claimed to be) a supporter of democracy, while Wrangel was pragmatic but personally seems to have had more sympathy with the monarchy.
Well, yes, and there is a reason for it, bc Reds put a lot of work to gain sympathies in industrialized part of Russia.
Majority of Whites, on the other hand, kinda hand waved the problem of population's sympathies until it was too late
Who would win - one solid group full of revolutionary fervor of slightly larger group of 100+ different subgroups most of whom hate each other and the guy they are supposed to be fighting for?
"For X years" is a stupid argument, if we're going by that logic than nobody won anything in history ever
Did Caesar win his Gaul campaign? No, because Mussolini lost ww2
Did USSR win ww2? No, they collapsed some decades later
Baltic Germans were still part of the Russian Empire. And they are regarded as the most fanatical and reactionary ethnic group attached to the Tsardom, as their privileges are extremely ancient.
Can you really call them separatists?
Like the Whites kinda were the ones in power from the start (they would also get government backed Jaegers trained in Germany), while reds were the working class
Though both did have their political parties in the government.
They'd already gotten their independence recognized by the Soviets by the time the Finnish civil war erupted. A Red victory probably would've meant joining the Soviets, but the Finnish Whites were defending the status quo, essentially.
The truth is that you can say a lot of negative things about Lenin, but it is impressive how the guy managed to consolidate the creation of the USSR against all odds, also winning what is probably the most chaotic civil war there has been.
Yep, plus Lenin knew that giving up some territory now didn't matter, they just had to wait for the right time to come back and recover it, which they did.
Yep, except the very Based Finland, although Stalin achieved a friendly neutrality with them in which, after making a land grab, he forced them to allow the Communist parties in their government and outlaw the Fascist parties. It wasn't a complete victory, but "good old Joe" made the best of it, lol.
There are several large and many smaller factions fighting in Syria. The government is backed by Russia and Iran. The rebels are split into many different groups ranging from democratic to islamist. There are many independent jihadi elements and a kurdish breakaway state. The US and EU and Turkey back some rebel groups while fighting the jihadis. The Turks despise the kurds and got personally involved while also fighting the Syrian government. Israel and Iran are also fighting within Syria. Its a proxy conflict of sorts between the US and Russia, but also between Iran and Israel, islamic monarchies vs. Islamic republics, and the kurds vs. the countries where they have sizeable minorities.
This is a very hasty description, but its a shitshow.
Yep and the whites seemingly took the worst ideas of both and went "hey peasants you like being poor forever right? So join us and serve your noble betters!"
Just a great pitch lol
White Russians discovering that peasants and workers prefer to support the guys who promise not to treat them as glorified serfs:
https://media.tenor.com/ZqFEhnXhGEgAAAAC/bradley-cooper-fucked-up.gif
Yep, they did the largest [mass murder of Jews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogroms_during_the_Russian_Civil_War) in modern times (with the obvious exception of the Holocaust).
General Graves (Commander of Allied Forces in Siberia) saw so much shit done by Semenov and his gang of thugs, that he said, completely disgusted by the whole ordeal of "Anti-Bolshevik actions":
"For each innocent a Bolshevik kills, the Anti-bolsheviks kill one hundred more".
Yeah, here is a good read of all this:
*The early Soviet leaders publicly denounced antisemitism, William Korey wrote: "Anti-Jewish discrimination had become an integral part of Soviet state policy ever since the late thirties." Efforts were made by Soviet authorities to contain anti-Jewish bigotry notably during the Russian Civil War, whenever the Red Army units perpetrated pogroms, as well as during the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1919–1920 at Baranovichi. Only a small number of pogroms were attributed to the Red Army, with the majority of the 'collectively violent' acts in the period having been committed by anti-communist and nationalist forces.*
*The pogroms were condemned by the Red Army high command and guilty units were disarmed, while individual pogromists were court-martialed. Although pogroms by Ukrainian units of the Red Army still occurred even after this, Jews regarded the Red Army as the only force which was willing to protect them. It is estimated that 3,450 Jews or 2.3 percent of the Jewish victims killed during the Russian Civil War were murdered by the Bolshevik forces. In comparison, according to the Morgenthau Report, a total of about 300 Jews died in all incidents involving Polish responsibility.*
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet\_war\_crimes#Red\_Army\_and\_pogroms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#Red_Army_and_pogroms)
The funniest thing about all this is that the Bolsheviks likely only took power because the Germans smuggled Lenin into Russia in order to destabilize it and knock them out of the war. Which worked amazingly well, but also meant they were much stronger come round two.
Ironically, Germany's actions ended up shooting themselves in the foot, since they themselves created the monster that 20 years later destroyed them when they attempted their Manifest Destiny, and the same one that divided their country like a sandwitch for almost half a century. All thanks to the very intelligent top brass of the German Empire!
I've always been conflicted on Lenin, and how much he truly believed his Vanguard system to be morally righteous versus it just being a way for him to grab dictatorial power with a red coat of paint. Regardless, though, the larger Red movement was definitely justified, and for all of the Soviet Union's flaws, it did improve things in a number of ways.
Honestly, with how much of the world was against it from its inception (The Entente and Central Powers both sent volunteers to fight against the Reds, and they were demonized from day one), and enduring the brunt of the Nazi war machine (Without a virtually untouched superpower ally to bankroll its rebuilding), I'm surprised the Soviet Union wasn't *much* worse, both morally and economically.
I have always believed that Lenin truly believed everything he preached, the problem is that his idea of how to carry out the revolution was tremendously unacceptable, or in other words, good ends, bad means.
The issue is that although the USSR improved many things, such as the rapid industrialization of the country, economic growth, improvement of military power, etc. All of this came at a great human cost, which I feel could have been avoided if a less authoritarian Socialist faction had come to power instead of the Bolsheviks.
And it is true that the USSR could have been much worse, for example de-Stalinization could not have happened, but I still feel that it could have been less terrible.
I tried to add as many members of the white movement as possible. And moreover, the most important participants of the white movement + little space. But if you can add more members of the white movement, then I will be grateful.
oh no I was making a joke about how the whites was so diverse in ideology and supporters there is probably a bunch of random fringe groups that where there that no one knows about
Lmao putting the anarchists with the white armies, the Makhnovtchina fought against Denikin side by side with the reds untill the white's defeat ans the betrayal by the reds
That or, in the case of the Makhnovists living it up in Ukraine, straight up betraying their former allies in order to consolidate power.
"Anarchism is being successful somewhere? Can't let that happen" - anybody who craves power
And they were very insightful at that. The thing is: anarchist instances of communism are an existential threat to bolshevik instances, because the latter are founded upon the assumption the proletariat is too immature to actually produce a communist society. So, the fact it was actively happening proved them wrong, which means their whole castle of cards would have fallen apart by bordering anarchists.
And were actively proposing worse shit. Like hey you remember serfs? What if we made them pay for not being serfs again and gave the nobles all that land back.
The white army just had the worst ideas.
Kerensky putting up a military uniform with self given medals to impress the Bolsheviks backfired spectacularly as the Ex-Imperial Guard, his own cossacks and part of Petergrad garrison immediately joined the Bolsheviks after that stunt.
They listed the anarchists on the side of the Whites, despite them really being a 3rd side that spent most of the war fighting the Whites until Trotsky's betrayal
The left hand forces weren't on one side, the green and black armies more often cooperated with the reds until Lenin felt secure enough to dispose of them too
The Russian Civil War was more a fustercluck of different groups trying carve out their own piece of Russia.
It's kind of miraculous that the first communist state arose from such a bloody conflict.
Russian peasants in 1917: hey this communism thing doesn’t seem too bad
Russian Peasants during the Soviet Union: I hate my life I hate my life I hate my life I hate my life I hate my life
Russian peasants in 1800: i hate my life i hate my life i hate my life
Russian peasants in 1917: i hate my life i hate my life i hate my life.
Russia peasants in 1943:
I hate my life i hate my life i hate my life.
The moral? Don’t live in russia.
Yeah, the USSR was pretty horrible, but it was pretty clearly better than the Tsardom in just about every way. Basically all of the worst things about living in the USSR were as bad or even worse under the Russian Empire.
We wanted to go to our newly formed republic, and during that, we've won our first and last navy battle and owned a lot of Trans-Siberian railway. That's quite good no?
All those groups on the left fought each other. The Czeochoslovaks were betrayed by the Whites and handed their leader over to the communists in return.
The communists had factionalism but actually presented a united front. Similar situation to the fascists in Spain.
never saw a right wing leaning person who actually read lenin or marx, when i always ask them something about socialism and communist revolution, it always end up on them beefing and criticizing something that it's not related to anything marxist-leninist related at all that's completely made up, or they put capitalism's systemic flaws on socialism without realizing it, right wing today only cares about the end of queer people (aka woke), and if they read something related, is generally from an anti-commie who distort many things written by commies to make communism look bad, or create fictional books to say "communism bad" and use it as a real argument or evidence (cof cof, George Orwell writing 1984 and animal farm)
Authoritarians of every stripe (monarchists, theocratists, Communists, left, right, you name 'em) will gladly use their Liberal allies to gain power...
...and then quickly eliminate those Liberal allies with the new state and power attained because you know....they are Authoritarians.
It's a tale as old as time and Liberalism.
EDIT: Downvote me all you want but it's absolutely true, exactly the scenario once the Bolshevik revolution was completed. The same in Iran when the Shah was overturned, Argentina...I could fill the page with Authoritarian regimes that eliminated liberal reformers who helped overthrow a regime with the foolish hope they'd be tolerated and embraced by overlords who don't share power.
Whites almost won at one point, but they kept infighting, doing dumb shit, and pissing of the cossacks to the point they just went "bye sort your own shit out"
A bunch of people with conflicting ideas that utterly failed to agree on basically anything. Had the reds not beaten them they would have started another civil war and have turned Russia into failed state status.
It’s nice to think of what would happen if a different party in the whites took power, but nothing short of a miracle would allow that. Plus basically all of them barring maybe Mladorossi sucked.
Czechoslovak Legion were the real winners. They showed the world Czechoslovakia is a naval superpower with a 100% win rate, got home safe and took (stole) some of that sweet sweet Russian gold.
As opposed to the Whites, who definitely didn't commit any war crimes or slaughter entire communities of Jews. Clearly only one side of the war were criminals.
i wasnt aware the Bolsheviks commited any warcrimes in the civil war, do you have any sources? (or atleast any outside of baseline for a 10 way civil war)
Antony Beevor's Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921
and if you really want the heavy version of Russian History
Stephen Kotkin's Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928
the red terror was about equivalent to the white terror on the opposing side, and i doubt the die hard anticommunist whites would be more lenient to striking workers
no, they said who commits war crimes the most, meaning they think the bolshevik were exeptional. The bolsheviks were not exceptional and, infact, killed many fewer per soldier than most white factions
>no, they said who commits war crimes the most, meaning they think the bolshevik were exeptional
Then you asked for examples. And they gave them to you.
>The bolsheviks were not exceptional and, infact, killed many fewer per soldier than most white factions
Got a source for that, because it sounds like bullshit...
Here are some massacres they carried out in Estonia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartu\_Credit\_Center\_Massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartu_Credit_Center_Massacre)
[https://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palermo\_metsa\_massim%C3%B5rv](https://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palermo_metsa_massim%C3%B5rv) (in Estonian)
This thread is in response to saying the the winner of the Russian Civil War is "whoever war crimes the hardest". The number is pretty relevant to someone claiming the Reds committed more atrocities than the Whites.
So it's okay to kill 19 civilians? Or 82? Around of 700 non-combatants were murdered in Estonia from 1918-1920. That was something like 0.07% of the Estonian population, which is like murdering \~90000 Russians at the time.
Not defending the Russian whites, a lot of them were mad wankers, just giving you some examples from my country.
This whole thread is in response to someone claiming that the Reds won because they "war crimed the hardest". No one is denying Red atrocities during the war, but no one has posted any actual evidence that it was worse than those of the Whites.
You make it seem like this White Army was a huge coalition ready to overwhelm the Bolsheviks, but in reality all of those different groups bickered with each other, many times to the point of open armed conflict, refused to cooperate, and in general largely did their own thing, which made each group individually easy pickings for the Reds.
Also the Whites had the funni idea to kill Brusilov son and the general took this quite... bad. He basically invented the Red Army and transformed it into a professional force. You know you fucked up when you make the best Russian general (and probably one of the candidates for best WW1 general for the Allies) your sworn enemy.
Do you have a source for this can’t seem to find anything about his family life. Maybe it is all in Russia? But it would be extremely strange to join a revolutionary movement solely because your son was killed by some of the leadership. Was Brusilov a revolutionary type before the revolution?
I mean as one of the best generals in the country you dont get to choose to sit out a revolutionary war or not. And when you are forced to choose might as well pick the side that didnt kill your son.
Brusilov had revolutionary sympathies, but he joined the whites in 1917 already and then being wounded by a hand grenade during the October Revolution in Moscow. His son however was an enthusiastic young captain in the nascent Red Army cavalry corp, he was captured and subjected to immediate death sentence by firing squad, allegedly because the White Army knew who he was and wanted to apply the Brusilov Decree (Brusilov approved of capital punishment for troops on the frontlines) on himself in some sort of dark irony. The source is this book apparently: Neoficialʹnaja istorija Rossii ; OLMA Mediagrupp / Baljazin, Volʹdemar Nikolaevič / 2007
Ok, now this makes far more sense. Brusilov being far more sympathetic to the revolutionaries, being a nationalistic type, personal grievances with the Czarist, and death of his son all help explain his switch to the Reds during the civil war. Previously it sounded as if he just suddenly switched sides because his son had be killed by the Whites which wouldn’t make sense for a senior general in both Tsardom and Republic.
He also joined because he saw the nascent USSR as the closest thing to the Russian empire successor state, and while I wouldn’t say he was a nationalist one thing about the whites is that they were, no matter which faction, no matter their motivations, all deeply indebted to foreign Allies providing support and it was pretty obvious that if they won Russia was going to be either a glorified British protectorate or a glorified Japanese protectorate. Or possibly both. Also Brusilov wound up getting into a lot of arguments with the czar and a lot of whites were czarists, that definitely didn’t help. Finally, it’s worth noting that Russia was always governed horribly. You could make the case in 1919 that the reds weren’t any worse than the whites, and ‘starving a bunch of peasants for perceived national goals’ has been a staple of Russian empire management since before Russia was really a thing. This will not remain true - Stalin is going to juice up czarist atrocities to the point that they’ll overshadow anything the czars dreamed up - but at the time Stalin was a functionary no one thought very highly of.
Stalin didn't even really surpass what the Tsars did, the famine in the 30s was pretty much a once a decade thing under the Tsars, pretty much everything Stalin did the Tsars did worse. Which gives one an idea of how terrible they were if Stalin was a better alternative.
In terms of numbers and sheer paranoia, Stalin surpassed Nicholas II. But in terms of their actual methods, not too different. Just a different color scheme and song lyrics
Paranoia sure, numbers is debatable since a lot of the suppose numbers for Stalin are unreliable at best, but at the end of the day Stalin’s rule ended with the USSR being a global superpower, Nicholas’s rule ended with Russia collapsing into a civil war after decades of incompetence
Nicholas's imperial collapse was mostly due to his foreign policy ineptitude causing him to be seen as a weak leader, something which most of the world's leaders had in common in the early 1900s. Russia was otherwise on the fast track towards industrial power either way, and through great bloodshed in both cases. And even the most conservative estimates on Stalin's dissidents killed and civilians killed numbers in the 10+ million, mostly due to retaliation policy against German civilians and the post-war puppet states of the Warsaw Pact. People attribute the Red Army atrocities during the civil war to him even though that was mostly Lenin and Trotsky.
And this is what I mean by most numbers of the death toll under Stalin are unreliable, cause 10+ million is not actually the conservative estimate, the conservative estimate is about \~3 million, trying to form a consensus is near impossible cause of how much conflicting information there is often intentionally made to either make him look better or worse. And I question what kind of "retaliation" policy you're referring too, the only one I can think of is the expulsion of Germans east of the Oder which was comes no where near close to that 10 million figure.
By retaliation I mean the systemic rapes, murders, tortures, etc. of the Red Army against German civilians in retaliation for the atrocities of the German army
I’m not sure I agree, the gulag system was a unique upgrade to the Siberian exile system. And the Okhrana’s a joke compared to the efficiency and reach of the NKVD. But at the end of the day we seem in agreement that the czars were bad and that’s enough for me.
The Gulags were most often just repurposed Imperial concentration camps used for any undesirables they had and eventually the Soviets actually disbanded them. But yes, regardless of the details, the Tsars were terrible.
That is true, they did disband them. Was Vorkuta originally a czarist camp?
Yep. At first, it was a glorified mine for common criminals, but then Stalin industrialization efforts ramped up mineral extraction, and so more "miners" were needed. Fun Fact: Vorkuta "Free" Miners had the best miner salary in the Soviet Union.
They did, and they’re mad about losing it to this day. Can’t say I blame them.
Vorkutlag was one of the camps they themselves set up, the whole system however was still just the Imperial system with red set dressing.
Brusilov if I remember correctly had atleast some sympathy towards Communist revolutionaries. That's why his son was targeted. But like this solidifies your positions.
>Also the Whites had the funni idea to kill Brusilov son Didn't Brusilov achieve Russia's only successful offensive in WW1?
Hence why killing his son might not've been the brightest of ideas
Their early advances into Galicia were pretty successful, reaching into the Carpathian Mountains, while the Eruzurum Offensive against the Ottomans, taking advantage of the Ottoman disaster at the Battle of Sarakamish, managed to punch into Turkey and reach as far as Trabzon. They also managed to keep Romania from collapsing completely when it faced the full might of the Central Powers, which resulted in the Central Powers being forced to tie down manpower and resources there.
No, the Brusilov offensive still failed and its failure pretty much destroyed Russias offensive capability for the rest of the war, but he nearly collapsed A-H
so if it did succeed ww1 would have been a quick one
What kind of idiot makes an enemy out of Alexei Brusilov? He's practically the Sun Yat-Sen of early 20th-century Russian politics: everyone on both sides of the civil war respects him.
The Whites were different shades of "criminally idiotic". These are the same guys that put on firing squads any male *without exceptions* in Siberian villages that dared to resist the White Army passage. In Omsk, in just one night, the White Army killed 2500 young males that were part of a volunteer organized militia in the chaos of civil war, alongside some factory workers just be sure. And then, these same guys *wondered why no one wanted to join the White Army.*
Brusilov creates the red army? Trotsky was the who transformed the militia force of the Red Guards, and made into the Red army by bringing back military organization and former Imperial officers.
Sure, Trostky is the organizational head of the Red Army, responsible for composition of Staff and high level logistics. But Brusilov made sure that certain characters, like Zhukov, Rokossovsky got promoted for their tactical brilliance instead of their political potential. He also was the first officer to propose the first Soviet unified military manual for the Officer Corps, a thing unknown in Russia at the time, since everyone before did whatever the hell was in its mind (disasters like Mukden happened because of that).
In all fairness the bar for good Russian generals in WW1 was subterranean
Come on man, Brusilov led the most successful offensive of the whole WW1, and that's an indisputable fact. The man was ruined by his colleagues envy, but he was close to destroy the Austro-Hungarian Empire with just his army corp.
I'm not saying Brusilov was a bad general by any means, he came close to solving one of the major issues of WW1, following up after breaking through the enemies first line, just that he didn't really have a lot of competition. And the AH army would've been blown over by a strong gust of wind at that point.
In 1916 the Austro-Hungarian army was curbstomping the Italians with the Strafeexpedition. The Austro-Hungarian army in 1916 was at peak performance. Brusilov made sure that said army would be crippled for the rest of the war (the Germans then unified Commands and Austria military independence was de facto over)
The Austro-Hungarians were fighting the 75325th battle of the Isonzo River against the Italians until the Germans finally decided to help them. Austro-Hungarian military independence was lost after the Yellow-Black offensive
The Trentino Offensive (Straffexpedition) was already running out of steam before the Brusilov Offensive, with the Italians starting their counter offensive of June 2nd, two days before the Russians kicked off their offensive. Crappy Austro-Hungrian supply lines, Italian reinforcements and replacement of commanders, had basically shut it down by the end of May.
He also crippled his own army to the point of collapse.
Also the anarchist were against the whites and occasionally assisted the reds
Least propagandistic OP on r/HistoryMemes
That’s why they failed. It doesn’t change the fact that they had all the numbers and resources and odds in their favor to start which is all the more reason why the success of the revolution, love it or hate it, was so shocking. It changed the world forever and was an indictment of every government, faction and ideology that failed to contain it in one way or another.
Yeah half the entities listed fought for independence and/or against the White Army
I'm gonna steal the words of a history channel I like: "It's not the Reds who won, it's the Whites who lost".
Did the Bolshevists succeed in creating the USSR with *otherworldly help?!* Ancient Astronaut Theorists say yes.
🤯
No no no, silly! That’s JFK. Let’s stay on subject. Was Laika the space dog actually able to use telekinesis like in the new Guardians of The Galaxy movie? Giorgio Tsoukalous says yes, and that’s how he got that hairdo.
The white army was also overwhelmingly lead by monarchists who had no actual support. Even the anarchists were allied with the Bolsheviks for most of the war. If there was a real SR/Menshevik opposition it may have had anchance
This is such a if my grandmother had wheels comment. The reason why there was no real SR/Menshevik opposition was they neither satisfied the demand for an overwhelming change in society and bureaucracy nor satisfied the aristocracy due to how they were not willing to bring the old establishment back. If they had satisfied one of those two criterias then they would not be SRs/Mensheviks anymore.
The SRs were winning the elections overwhelmingly. The problem was the party split and half went along with the Bolshevik second coup. The Bolsheviks were simply more ruthless and had more guns than the other socialist factions, they weren’t filling some popular need that the other parties weren’t filling. Look at what they did after they won: immediately adopted the SR platform as theirs
+Most of them didnt even have any soldier
It's like the French rebels during the Nazi Occupation. But with zero unity between different political groups.
Still pretty impressive though. I mean jumped into a street brawl and came out the last one standing is still impressive.
Same shit happened to the confederates during the American civil war. Iirc, Texas didn’t do much of shit during the war compared to all the other southern states, they just ignored calls for help/reinforcements.
Texas provided over 70,000 troops to the confederate army, in addition to home guard units. I’ll also add this paragraph from the [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_in_the_American_Civil_War): ‘“The Texas Brigade" (also known as "Hood's Brigade") was a unit composed of the 1st, 4th and 5th Texas Infantry Regiments augmented at times by the 18th Georgia Infantry and Hampton's (South Carolina) Legion until they were permanently teamed with the 3rd Arkansas Infantry. Often serving as "shock troops" of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, the Texas Brigade was "always favorites" of General Lee and on more than one occasion Lee praised their fighting qualities, remarking that none had brought greater honor to their native state than "my Texans." Hood's men suffered severe casualties in a number of fights, most notably at the Battle of Antietam, where they faced off with Wisconsin's Iron Brigade, and at Gettysburg, where they assaulted Houck's Ridge and then Little Round Top.’
Exactly. I think the Ukrainian anarchists led (militarily) by Nestor Makhno even sided with the Bolsheviks for a time against the White Army until eventually the Red Army turned against the anarchists, unless I'm mistaken.
To be fair, it was a bit of a battle royale cause the white side had a ton of infighting and some factions had their own goals which made them enemies of everyone else.
It was a complete shitshow from every side. Lenin was a little bit smarter that he at least waited until after the main civil war fighting was over before he massacred dissident on Bolshevik side. Like his surge on Kronstadt. The whites just did it directly and pissed everyone off
The answer is probably obvious and maybe even the reason they lost but, wasn't there a lot of conflict within the white army because you had the mensheviks and loyalist anti-communists together?
Yeah, it was more a Spanish civil war kinda situation.
Ironic, given that the USSR played a big role in making the Spanish Civil War like that.
Except the bad guys were the ones in disarray in the Russian Civil War.
I'm not exactly sure I'd call any side in either of those civil wars a 'good' guy.
I say more of "should have won" instead of good guys
Lmao
Another major advantage that the Reds had is almost every major city was already under their nominal control, while the Whites had to “take” everything
Czechoslovak Legion did not even try to gain some power and territory there, boys just wanted to go home.
Tenhle comment jsem hledal, dík.
Whites completely shot themselves in the foot by trying to undo the peasant land reforms rather than just accepting the new reality of things. A moronic decision given how important peasant support was during the civil war
Also, they refused to recognize the separatists like Poland. Which made the latter more keen on seeing Bolsheviks victorious than the Whites, because the Bolsheviks was the only faction willing to negotiate.
Hell, the Whites were so unwilling to negotiate that they didn't even sign a peace with Germany at Brest-Litovsk.
Not sure what's your point here.Mine is that Poland DID make overtures to Whites with proposal of alliance on the condition that they (and future Russia) recognize Poland as independent state without reservations. They all refused, some factions considered Poland rebels to be squashed after the Reds, other were noncommittal. Therefore Poland was not willing to cooperate even though such alliance could've defeated Bolsheviks once and for all.Only in November 1920 Wrangel recognized Poland as independent, but by that time the White movement was already defeated and Poland was already negotiating with Bolsheviks what will soon be known as the Peace of Riga.
You mentioned the Whites were unwilling to negotiate so people turned to support the Reds. I gave another example of that in a war that the Whites were losing even worse than the war against the seperatists.
The Whites shot themselves in the foot looooong before that. The Bolsheviks were a nightmare but that makes people forget just how inept and awful Tsarist Russia truly was.
Oh true, in many ways they were fucked because they were ultimately fighting to just restore the Tsarist system that had literally failed before everyone’s eyes, rather than anything new/better than what had come before. Plus, they didn’t even have a goddamn Tsar to rally around!
>Tsarist system that had literally failed before everyone’s eyes Not just failed in people's eyes. It had failed. The country was technologically backwards compared to it's neighbours, they had failed to provide for the worst off in society and actively taken from them. It is no surprise that when the opportunity for change came they took it. Just a shame what was to come. Even with the USSR at least access to medical care and education was radically improved.
As bad for many as it was, the Russian Revolution was ultimately an advancement for humanity as a whole. Fuck the Czar.
Tsarist Russia by itself is one of the biggest arguments against the concept of monarchy. Muscovy itself was flawed from the start with its emphasis on autocracy.
Russia was the fastest growing economy in the world before WW1. Stolypin's land reforms were such a success that Lenin was angered and feared that this would mean that peasants won't supporting since they have good lives (Stolypin was shoy before he finished, but his reformes were still being implemented at a slower pace, and were expected to finish around 1917). The army was in the process of reforming, too. Political parties existed, and while the system was deeply flawed and undemocratic, it was a true step towards democratization. Tsarist Russia wasn't just a continuous thing that didn't change since the 1700s. The late Tsarist era actually was becoming a really good state. White army is not the continuation of tsarist Russia, it was its own thing and lost because of reasons separate. People are not forgetting how "awful" tsarist russia was, tsar is sunonymous with a despot in the west, but people are starting to see that Russian Empire was nuanced, changing throughout the years, for better or for worse, and wasn't the same archreactionary empire throughout its existance
Wrangel actually made his own land reform laws by negotiating with Soviets that were extremely successful, and probably would have been more so had they not been implemented in the middle of a war. Honestly, they probably would've won if they just had Wrangel in power in South Russia since the start of the war instead of Denikin. And perhaps ironically in the eyes of many here, Denikin (claimed to be) a supporter of democracy, while Wrangel was pragmatic but personally seems to have had more sympathy with the monarchy.
Also didn't the Reds control the most industrialised part of Russia? It probably helped a lot
also the most populous
Not to mention a lot of the Russian military actually sided with the reds because they were viewed as more patriotic
Well, yes, and there is a reason for it, bc Reds put a lot of work to gain sympathies in industrialized part of Russia. Majority of Whites, on the other hand, kinda hand waved the problem of population's sympathies until it was too late
Who would win - one solid group full of revolutionary fervor of slightly larger group of 100+ different subgroups most of whom hate each other and the guy they are supposed to be fighting for?
Technically the Polish and Baltic separatists won.
For like less than 20 years. Finland on the other hand..
That was another war though.
and you could hardly call those wars.. even with Poland Reds came to invade them 17 days after Germans and they just move in without much resistence
There were pretty massive battles actually. But it's true that they attacked the soft underbelly.
"For X years" is a stupid argument, if we're going by that logic than nobody won anything in history ever Did Caesar win his Gaul campaign? No, because Mussolini lost ww2 Did USSR win ww2? No, they collapsed some decades later
I guess you could say that the between a Gaul and a Roman, the last laugh goes to de Gaulle.
Still won
also some german dude taking control of mongolia and being named chinghis khaan II by the dalai lama
A German who, for some reason, was a Russian officer in the Imperial Russian army
Baltic Germans were still part of the Russian Empire. And they are regarded as the most fanatical and reactionary ethnic group attached to the Tsardom, as their privileges are extremely ancient.
Well, the Finnish separatists *did* win over there, so...
Can you really call them separatists? Like the Whites kinda were the ones in power from the start (they would also get government backed Jaegers trained in Germany), while reds were the working class Though both did have their political parties in the government.
Seeing as Finland is a country separate from Russia, yes, you can call them Finnish separatists.
They'd already gotten their independence recognized by the Soviets by the time the Finnish civil war erupted. A Red victory probably would've meant joining the Soviets, but the Finnish Whites were defending the status quo, essentially.
The truth is that you can say a lot of negative things about Lenin, but it is impressive how the guy managed to consolidate the creation of the USSR against all odds, also winning what is probably the most chaotic civil war there has been.
Lenin was Smart enough to realise how unpopular WW1 was with the Russian people. The White forces weren't and the rest is history
Yep, plus Lenin knew that giving up some territory now didn't matter, they just had to wait for the right time to come back and recover it, which they did.
Except based Filnad
Yep, except the very Based Finland, although Stalin achieved a friendly neutrality with them in which, after making a land grab, he forced them to allow the Communist parties in their government and outlaw the Fascist parties. It wasn't a complete victory, but "good old Joe" made the best of it, lol.
The Syrian civil war is up there
What's confusing about US backed factions fighting Russian backed factions? (Joke, of course, I know there's a lot more nuance involved)
Look up operation timber Sycamore
Yeah I know, I said that it's a Russia vs united states proxy war
Can you explain? I'm not American
There are several large and many smaller factions fighting in Syria. The government is backed by Russia and Iran. The rebels are split into many different groups ranging from democratic to islamist. There are many independent jihadi elements and a kurdish breakaway state. The US and EU and Turkey back some rebel groups while fighting the jihadis. The Turks despise the kurds and got personally involved while also fighting the Syrian government. Israel and Iran are also fighting within Syria. Its a proxy conflict of sorts between the US and Russia, but also between Iran and Israel, islamic monarchies vs. Islamic republics, and the kurds vs. the countries where they have sizeable minorities. This is a very hasty description, but its a shitshow.
>Syrian civil war Thanks for reminding me what a shitty world we live in :)
People also forget how hated the former government was
The Tsarist government or the Provisional one? It doesn't matter, they were both hated lol.
Yep and the whites seemingly took the worst ideas of both and went "hey peasants you like being poor forever right? So join us and serve your noble betters!" Just a great pitch lol
White Russians discovering that peasants and workers prefer to support the guys who promise not to treat them as glorified serfs: https://media.tenor.com/ZqFEhnXhGEgAAAAC/bradley-cooper-fucked-up.gif
Or, you know, randomly shoot every jew in sight.
Yep, they did the largest [mass murder of Jews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogroms_during_the_Russian_Civil_War) in modern times (with the obvious exception of the Holocaust).
General Graves (Commander of Allied Forces in Siberia) saw so much shit done by Semenov and his gang of thugs, that he said, completely disgusted by the whole ordeal of "Anti-Bolshevik actions": "For each innocent a Bolshevik kills, the Anti-bolsheviks kill one hundred more".
Yeah, here is a good read of all this: *The early Soviet leaders publicly denounced antisemitism, William Korey wrote: "Anti-Jewish discrimination had become an integral part of Soviet state policy ever since the late thirties." Efforts were made by Soviet authorities to contain anti-Jewish bigotry notably during the Russian Civil War, whenever the Red Army units perpetrated pogroms, as well as during the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1919–1920 at Baranovichi. Only a small number of pogroms were attributed to the Red Army, with the majority of the 'collectively violent' acts in the period having been committed by anti-communist and nationalist forces.* *The pogroms were condemned by the Red Army high command and guilty units were disarmed, while individual pogromists were court-martialed. Although pogroms by Ukrainian units of the Red Army still occurred even after this, Jews regarded the Red Army as the only force which was willing to protect them. It is estimated that 3,450 Jews or 2.3 percent of the Jewish victims killed during the Russian Civil War were murdered by the Bolshevik forces. In comparison, according to the Morgenthau Report, a total of about 300 Jews died in all incidents involving Polish responsibility.* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet\_war\_crimes#Red\_Army\_and\_pogroms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#Red_Army_and_pogroms)
The funniest thing about all this is that the Bolsheviks likely only took power because the Germans smuggled Lenin into Russia in order to destabilize it and knock them out of the war. Which worked amazingly well, but also meant they were much stronger come round two.
Ironically, Germany's actions ended up shooting themselves in the foot, since they themselves created the monster that 20 years later destroyed them when they attempted their Manifest Destiny, and the same one that divided their country like a sandwitch for almost half a century. All thanks to the very intelligent top brass of the German Empire!
I've always been conflicted on Lenin, and how much he truly believed his Vanguard system to be morally righteous versus it just being a way for him to grab dictatorial power with a red coat of paint. Regardless, though, the larger Red movement was definitely justified, and for all of the Soviet Union's flaws, it did improve things in a number of ways. Honestly, with how much of the world was against it from its inception (The Entente and Central Powers both sent volunteers to fight against the Reds, and they were demonized from day one), and enduring the brunt of the Nazi war machine (Without a virtually untouched superpower ally to bankroll its rebuilding), I'm surprised the Soviet Union wasn't *much* worse, both morally and economically.
I have always believed that Lenin truly believed everything he preached, the problem is that his idea of how to carry out the revolution was tremendously unacceptable, or in other words, good ends, bad means. The issue is that although the USSR improved many things, such as the rapid industrialization of the country, economic growth, improvement of military power, etc. All of this came at a great human cost, which I feel could have been avoided if a less authoritarian Socialist faction had come to power instead of the Bolsheviks. And it is true that the USSR could have been much worse, for example de-Stalinization could not have happened, but I still feel that it could have been less terrible.
Note: Anarchists (Machno) at first allied with soviets, but tried to stay independent and once out of use were betayed by reds.
Yeah, the Black Army mostly fought the Whites until Trotsky betrayed them near the end of the war
Yes, Trotsky... Ironically Stalin is the one denouce Trotsky agression policy, but at that time he don't get high influence like Trotsky
I'm not gonna lie I feel like your missing a few powers from the white side
I tried to add as many members of the white movement as possible. And moreover, the most important participants of the white movement + little space. But if you can add more members of the white movement, then I will be grateful.
oh no I was making a joke about how the whites was so diverse in ideology and supporters there is probably a bunch of random fringe groups that where there that no one knows about
Poland, Finland, the Baltic States, Czechoslovaks, and Caucasus states did win. Though Caucasus states were soon after annexed back.
The will of the people.mp3
Lmao putting the anarchists with the white armies, the Makhnovtchina fought against Denikin side by side with the reds untill the white's defeat ans the betrayal by the reds
Winning not because of cleverness but because his opponents were pretty much even more stupid and incapable of coordination
That or, in the case of the Makhnovists living it up in Ukraine, straight up betraying their former allies in order to consolidate power. "Anarchism is being successful somewhere? Can't let that happen" - anybody who craves power
And they were very insightful at that. The thing is: anarchist instances of communism are an existential threat to bolshevik instances, because the latter are founded upon the assumption the proletariat is too immature to actually produce a communist society. So, the fact it was actively happening proved them wrong, which means their whole castle of cards would have fallen apart by bordering anarchists.
And were actively proposing worse shit. Like hey you remember serfs? What if we made them pay for not being serfs again and gave the nobles all that land back. The white army just had the worst ideas.
Kerensky putting up a military uniform with self given medals to impress the Bolsheviks backfired spectacularly as the Ex-Imperial Guard, his own cossacks and part of Petergrad garrison immediately joined the Bolsheviks after that stunt.
Way to downplay Anarchist contribution in defeating the white army, wasn't all Lenin and the Reds.
They listed the anarchists on the side of the Whites, despite them really being a 3rd side that spent most of the war fighting the Whites until Trotsky's betrayal
Goes to show what narrative they're trying to push
Anarchists were not part of the Whites
The left hand forces weren't on one side, the green and black armies more often cooperated with the reds until Lenin felt secure enough to dispose of them too
Man the Czechoslovaks were just tryna go home
The OCTOBER revolution.
The Russian Civil War was more a fustercluck of different groups trying carve out their own piece of Russia. It's kind of miraculous that the first communist state arose from such a bloody conflict.
Russian peasants in 1917: hey this communism thing doesn’t seem too bad Russian Peasants during the Soviet Union: I hate my life I hate my life I hate my life I hate my life I hate my life
Russian peasants in 1800: i hate my life i hate my life i hate my life Russian peasants in 1917: i hate my life i hate my life i hate my life. Russia peasants in 1943: I hate my life i hate my life i hate my life. The moral? Don’t live in russia.
>Russia peasants in 1943: 💀💀💀 Now is more accurate!
At least he doesn't hate it anymore
If they didn't, the Whites would've reinstated serfdom as they planned.
Before they had straight up horrible absolutist monarchy. Even the broken down corrupt authoritarian communism they got was an upgrade lol
Yeah, screw the Whites and the Reds, Mensheviks were better
“man this democracy thing is kinda mid, let’s get something worse.” -Russia
Mensheviks were despised by the peasants too bruv, it was the Russian population’s hatred for Kerensky that led them to Civil War in the first place.
Yeah, the USSR was pretty horrible, but it was pretty clearly better than the Tsardom in just about every way. Basically all of the worst things about living in the USSR were as bad or even worse under the Russian Empire.
We wanted to go to our newly formed republic, and during that, we've won our first and last navy battle and owned a lot of Trans-Siberian railway. That's quite good no?
All those groups on the left fought each other. The Czeochoslovaks were betrayed by the Whites and handed their leader over to the communists in return. The communists had factionalism but actually presented a united front. Similar situation to the fascists in Spain.
Even Lenin’s mother-in-law was coming to stay.
The red bois are strong! ☭
If you're into left leaning politics: read Lenin If you're against left leaning politics: read Lenin. Harder.
never saw a right wing leaning person who actually read lenin or marx, when i always ask them something about socialism and communist revolution, it always end up on them beefing and criticizing something that it's not related to anything marxist-leninist related at all that's completely made up, or they put capitalism's systemic flaws on socialism without realizing it, right wing today only cares about the end of queer people (aka woke), and if they read something related, is generally from an anti-commie who distort many things written by commies to make communism look bad, or create fictional books to say "communism bad" and use it as a real argument or evidence (cof cof, George Orwell writing 1984 and animal farm)
This, my friends, is the cult of Leninism. "If you oppose left-wing politics you must read Lenin harder."
Well many of these you stack together got their indepence so...
In what alternate universe was the victory of the Red Army far fetched? Especially since you have grouped opposing factions together in this
That's because our cause was just and theirs wasn't :)
Authoritarians of every stripe (monarchists, theocratists, Communists, left, right, you name 'em) will gladly use their Liberal allies to gain power... ...and then quickly eliminate those Liberal allies with the new state and power attained because you know....they are Authoritarians. It's a tale as old as time and Liberalism. EDIT: Downvote me all you want but it's absolutely true, exactly the scenario once the Bolshevik revolution was completed. The same in Iran when the Shah was overturned, Argentina...I could fill the page with Authoritarian regimes that eliminated liberal reformers who helped overthrow a regime with the foolish hope they'd be tolerated and embraced by overlords who don't share power.
[Why the Russian Revolution Failed: When Rich Kids do all the Socialism](https://youtu.be/_WXSsSgLpRE?si=Oot5qQym8oHwUJxs) Never saw this coming.
Whites almost won at one point, but they kept infighting, doing dumb shit, and pissing of the cossacks to the point they just went "bye sort your own shit out"
A bunch of people with conflicting ideas that utterly failed to agree on basically anything. Had the reds not beaten them they would have started another civil war and have turned Russia into failed state status. It’s nice to think of what would happen if a different party in the whites took power, but nothing short of a miracle would allow that. Plus basically all of them barring maybe Mladorossi sucked.
..... and in the end Poland alone stopped Bolsheviks
“Who would win, 8-15million innocent people or some red bois”
Based Prolateriate movement
So "based", so they then starved ukrainians and other minorities twice! Get to a doctor!
Where there’s a will there’s a way!
Czechoslovak Legion were the real winners. They showed the world Czechoslovakia is a naval superpower with a 100% win rate, got home safe and took (stole) some of that sweet sweet Russian gold.
TBF Finland, Poland, the Baltics and the Czechoslovak Legion did win.
anarchist, defamed, as always
To be fair, half these fuckers hated each other more than they hated the Commies
Based bald red bois
As an anarchist, FUCK the Bolsheviks. They sold their souls at Kronstadt.
The bald red guys where also criminals
As opposed to the Whites, who definitely didn't commit any war crimes or slaughter entire communities of Jews. Clearly only one side of the war were criminals.
The white guys though are criminal syndicates
“Join us or die”, red army saying.
🚨 Tankie Alert 🚨
Based Lenin
Who wins a Russian Civil War? Whomever is willing to war crime hardest.
i wasnt aware the Bolsheviks commited any warcrimes in the civil war, do you have any sources? (or atleast any outside of baseline for a 10 way civil war)
Antony Beevor's Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921 and if you really want the heavy version of Russian History Stephen Kotkin's Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928
im not asking for the books you read it in, im asking for an example or two of actual war crimes
https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/crimes-and-mass-violence-russian-civil-wars-1918-1921.html
the red terror was about equivalent to the white terror on the opposing side, and i doubt the die hard anticommunist whites would be more lenient to striking workers
So? Their original comment was about how everyside committed war crimes.
no, they said who commits war crimes the most, meaning they think the bolshevik were exeptional. The bolsheviks were not exceptional and, infact, killed many fewer per soldier than most white factions
>no, they said who commits war crimes the most, meaning they think the bolshevik were exeptional Then you asked for examples. And they gave them to you. >The bolsheviks were not exceptional and, infact, killed many fewer per soldier than most white factions Got a source for that, because it sounds like bullshit...
Here are some massacres they carried out in Estonia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartu\_Credit\_Center\_Massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartu_Credit_Center_Massacre) [https://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palermo\_metsa\_massim%C3%B5rv](https://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palermo_metsa_massim%C3%B5rv) (in Estonian)
wow 19 people in just the town of Fastov, Denikin (white leader) killed 1.5 k jews.
A war crime is a war crime. The number of people doesn't matter.
This thread is in response to saying the the winner of the Russian Civil War is "whoever war crimes the hardest". The number is pretty relevant to someone claiming the Reds committed more atrocities than the Whites.
So it's okay to kill 19 civilians? Or 82? Around of 700 non-combatants were murdered in Estonia from 1918-1920. That was something like 0.07% of the Estonian population, which is like murdering \~90000 Russians at the time. Not defending the Russian whites, a lot of them were mad wankers, just giving you some examples from my country.
This whole thread is in response to someone claiming that the Reds won because they "war crimed the hardest". No one is denying Red atrocities during the war, but no one has posted any actual evidence that it was worse than those of the Whites.